Mugabe’s wife gets immunity over claim she assaulted model
SOUTH AFRICA: Grace Mugabe, wife of the president of Zimbabwe, has escaped prosecution over allegations she beat a model with an extension cord – the South African government allowing her to go home to avoid a diplomatic row.
Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s foreign minister, said she had agonised over the need to protect the rights of Mugabe’s alleged victim against maintaining ‘‘good intergovernmental relations’’. She decided to prioritise the latter ‘‘in the interests of the Republic [of South Africa]’’.
Lawyers for Gabriella Engels, 20, said they would seek to overturn the immunity in the high court, and pursue a private prosecution.
The South African Democratic Alliance (DA) opposition party called for a parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which it said had further damaged the country’s international standing after its failure to arrest President Bashir of Sudan, who is wanted for war crimes, when he visited Johannesburg in 2015.
‘‘It is simply inexplicable how this has happened again,’’ John Steenhuisen, the DA’s chief whip, said.
The Zimbabwean opposition party Movement for Democratic Change said South Africa had missed an opportunity to save its neighbour from Mugabe, who has ambitions to succeed her husband. ‘‘It is very unfortunate that South Africa decided to grant her diplomatic immunity,’’ Obert Gutu, its spokesman, said.
Mugabe had claimed through friends that she was also injured in the fight in a hotel in Johannesburg a week ago. She was searching for her sons, whom she has previously said have been captured by ‘‘evil spirits’’ that make them drink alcohol and womanise, and is alleged to have assaulted Engels after finding her and two other women in a hotel room booked by the two men.
A source said Mugabe also hit Robert Mugabe Jr, 24, and Chatunga, 20.
An unnamed worker at the Capital 20 West hotel said a waitress who was delivering food was knocked over by Robert Jr as he fled his mother.
South Africa’s Sunday Times newspaper reported that a settle- ment had been reached: ‘‘There was a meeting between Grace Mugabe’s people and the hotel’s human resources people,’’ the employee said.
The deliberations over whether to let Mugabe leave South Africa are believed to have caused a row between the police minister, who said that his officers were poised to arrest her, and NkoanaMashabane, who wanted to keep Harare happy.
The diplomatic rift was blamed for the grounding on Friday of both countries’ national airlines. An Air Zimbabwe plane is said to have been refused permission to leave Johannesburg because it did not have the correct paperwork, prompting Harare to ground South African Airways’ planes.
Willie Spies, a lawyer for Engels, said he hoped to make it difficult for Mugabe to return to South Africa, where she regularly shops at designer stores and is thought to own properties worth 45 million rands ((NZ$4.7m).
‘‘We won’t necessarily get her into custody,’’ he said, ‘‘ but this will be a civil sanctions campaign at the very least. She can shop in Harare mall instead.’’ – The Times